"Home."
VII
"THE GREATEST OF THESE"
It was nearly two hours after the Mercury car had crashed into ruin under the aromatic apple-trees, before knowledge of the disaster came to Flavia. Breakfast was over, at least the breakfast of Mr. Rose and his daughter; no other member of the family had appeared. A maid reported that Isabel had ordered her horse and had departed on an early ride to the neighboring golf club, where she was engaged to play with an equally athletic college girl, that morning. There was nothing to disturb the customary pleasant routine or to suggest uneasiness. At the usual hour Mr. Rose left for the city; he was on his way to New York when he first caught the rumor that sent him instead to the farmhouse at Westbury.
Flavia, roseate, softly irradiated, moving in an atmosphere of undefined expectation as difficult to breathe calmly as the rarefied air of a mountain-top, had held herself to the accomplishment of her daily charges. She was seated at her little white-and-gold desk in her white-and-gold study, setting the household affairs in order for the day with the dainty precision of all her methods, when Isabel came into the room and stopped upright and rigid, near the door.
"You had better hear it now," the younger girl dully announced. "There has been an accident on the course."
Flavia's hands flew over her heart, the room blackened.
"Corrie——" she gasped.
"No; Mr. Gerard. He is alive, that's all I know."